


Did You Sleep Well?

by sunsetude



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Letting go of first love, M/M, Moving On, Of Love and Letting Go, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:35:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28461762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetude/pseuds/sunsetude
Summary: Time is supposed to always win, even against such a formidable opponent as Huang Renjun.But then again, Yukhei has always been blind to the folly of his youth.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21





	Did You Sleep Well?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boyfrendery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boyfrendery/gifts).



> 2020, you have not been a pleasure. I will however thank many dear friends I have met this year, and the ones who have stuck around since last year. It has been an honour knowing each of you- let’s try survive 2021 too. 
> 
> For Lex, one last Luren fic (from me anyway) this side of the new year for the luren library. Here’s to a 2021 with much more yelling about luren, and just being you. It’s lovely to have you here. 
> 
> One last rushed piece of writing, not yet edited, written whilst listening to ‘Champagne Problems’ by Taylor Swift, and LÉON’s discography on repeat, an old piece I wrote that never got put anywhere based on ‘so sick’ by a.c.e, along with being inspiration for the title, and with wine in hand as I type out the scribbles in my notebook from the last few days.
> 
> Now, without further ado, I say happy new year, fuck 2020, here’s some angst. Short and [bitter]sweet. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

> Someone I loved once gave me a 
> 
> box full of darkness.
> 
> It took me years to understand that
> 
> this, too, was a gift.

Yukhei hovers around the kitchen in hopes of avoiding just about everyone he knows who all just happen to have congregated in the same 900 square foot flat. The last he saw of them, his friends had all migrated to the sofas and so he figures he’s safe for at least another ten minutes, unless Yangyang has decided Mark’s welcome home party has turned into a ‘how much can you drink before you pass out’ sort of party, which frankly wouldn’t be all that surprising but Yukhei is holding out hope. 

He even accounts for Jaemin’s too happy for someone who has only had one pint greeting and minorly suffocating hug. 

What he doesn’t account for is Renjun. In any shape or form.

Sure, part of him knew Renjun could turn up at any moment, particularly with the lack of communication between the two of them in the last eight months, and the radio silence on any sort of mention of Renjun unless someone slips up and proceeds to immediately divert the topic of conversation. 

Yukhei knows they’ve been walking on eggshells around him when it comes to Renjun. But he didn’t realise how much he appreciated it until now.

Renjun stands at the doorway, feet firmly on the floor, gaze fixated on Yukhei and Yukhei forgets how to breathe.

  
  


Theoretically, Yukhei was fully prepared for Renjun returning at any second. Realistically, he had no idea what he’d been trying to convince himself of.

Renjun looks good. Really good. And it makes Yukhei hate him a little more than he already did, because Renjun is wearing an oversized shirt that is one too many buttons undone, flashing a hint of collarbone and Yukhei’s brain is hardwired to associate that image with Yukhei’s lips pressed against them and Renjun’s hands in his hair. 

  
  


At least it’d been the best goodbye Yukhei had ever given, or received. 

  
  


Yukhei figures that Renjun isn’t going to speak, not unless Yukhei does first. And it’s in that moment he knows that it’s either stand here in silence for the next five minutes until someone comes to grab another drink or notices that Yukhei has been hiding for half an hour, or Yukhei says something, anything, in order to evacuate this situation as soon as possible.

“Hey,” Yukhei utters meekly. It’s pathetic, he knows it, Renjun knows it, but he tops it off with a pathetic hand motion that’s supposedly a wave just to make sure the message gets across.

“It’s good to see you, Yukhei. You... you look good.” 

Yukhei knows damn well he looks good, thank you very much. He isn’t spending all that extra time in the gym to avoid being alone with his thoughts for nothing.

“You’re full of shi-surprises. I didn’t hear you were coming back, but then again you probably aren’t staying long enough to really call it a return, are you?” It’s not a question. Yukhei doesn’t mean to be so bitter but he can’t help it, Renjun has made him bitter. Eight months without a single word from him, eight months of trying to make himself forget that he loves him makes Yukhei bitter. 

“Xuxi, please.”

“ _Don’t_ call me that. We can’t just pick up where we left off, that isn’t how this works.” 

“I’m trying Xu– Yukhei. I want us to be better than whatever this is between us.”

“Then you shouldn’t have left like you did.” 

“I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” 

“But you _did_. You meant to leave in the middle of the night so I couldn’t see you off in the morning, couldn’t even ask how you slept. You left. You left without saying goodbye.” 

“We said goodbye, _multiple_ times if my memory doesn’t deceive me.” 

“God, now is not the time for innuendos, Renjun. I’m trying to tell you how I feel but as always, you’re shutting me down from the get go. I don’t know what you thought you could get from me, but you were wrong.” 

Renjun watches Yukhei grab a bottle from beside him, his shoulder pushing past Renjun’s own as he speed walks out the door to join the others. 

Renjun hates that it ended up like this. 

He didn’t say goodbye because he couldn’t. If he’d waited for Yukhei to see him out the door, to see him off at the airport, Renjun would never have left. 

But even now, Renjun isn’t sure he made the right choice. Even if he chose between the lesser of two evils.

  
  


See, Renjun _knows_ you can’t always choose love. He also knows you can’t always choose your career. And, unfortunately, he knows better than most, you can't choose both. 

Renjun might’ve been able to convince Yukhei to pack up his life in Seoul and move to New York within the span of two weeks, or he might’ve ended up leaving alone, or, alone and without his dream job. 

  
  


Because life isn’t all his grandmother made it out to be, it’s not a walk in the park and it’s certainly not any easier once you’re in love. His grandmother had never warned him that no matter how in love you may be, that doesn’t mean you’ve met the ‘one’, or whatever bullshit Renjun believed existed as a kid. 

  
  
  
  


Yukhei leaves the party early, slipping out before eleven p.m., feigning a headache and an early call for work. He makes it home before midnight, traipsing through his front door, dragging his feet behind him, wondering– where did it all go wrong? How did they end up here, Yukhei going home to an empty apartment, Renjun living six thousand miles away, no longer happy and in love, but unhappy and heartbroken?

  
  


Yukhei remembers something a little like this:

“No. No… my answer is no. I’m sorry, but _no._ ” 

And Yukhei’s heart drops to his stomach. “I’m sorry– what did you say?” 

“I said no, Xuxi. No, I will not marry you. I _can’t_ marry you.” 

“Are you serious? I mean… I thought– just, why?” Yukhei feels like it’s all some sort of sick joke, or perhaps a nightmare. He hopes Renjun hurts even half as much as he does.

“Let’s stop pretending we’re happy, Xuxi. We both know marriage won’t fix this. I’m sorry Yukhei, I can’t marry you like this. We both know it won’t work. I want us to be happy Yukhei. I want _you_ to be happy. And you won’t be happy like this.” 

“Are you fucking with me? I- I _love_ you. I thought you loved me too? Or has the last four years been some sort of fun for you? Time for you to figure out if you were really in love with me or not?” 

“No. God, no. Xuxi, I do. I have loved you. I love you, Xuxi, just not–“

“Just not enough to marry me, right?” His voice is stern, a trick his voice plays to hide how broken it would sound. “God, I’m so stupid.” 

There are tears in Renjun’s eyes, but Yukhei isn’t sure he believes them. 

And if it’s a competition, he can feel the dampness of his shirt where the tears haven’t stopped falling. He wins.

“No. Xuxi, don’t think like that, please. You deserve _more_ . You deserve better. I love you but not as much as you love me. And that kills me to know. I wish I did, but I can’t do that to you, I can’t make you resent your choice in a few years down the line and end up divorced by the time we’re thirty, and you realise I wasn’t enough for you. Let’s be happy, Xuxi. That much, you deserve. Thank you for loving me, I’m truly sorry _I_ can’t be enough for you, but someone, one day, will love you like you deserve. Good bye m, Xuxi, this is me letting you go. Until we meet again.” 

  
  


Yukhei can only watch as Renjun walks away. _Fuck_.

  
  


It’s hours later, after he’d spent the evening in the pub of a bed and breakfast, unable to sleep and booking the earliest train into London so he can fly back to _anywhere_. 

He calls, says thanks to the aboves that Renjun’s phone goes straight to voicemail. And he talks.

“I told the sunrise about you. As I rode the train back to London. without you in tow. I ripped that picture of you in my wallet, ended up looking for an open store first thing on a Sunday morning in the rain, trying to get hold of some tape to stick it back together. It made me wonder if I could stick us back together like that. It seemed so easy, and yet I can’t seem to make the two of us work. To make you stay. But I guess I’m the one who left this time. And perhaps this will be our final goodbye. Part of me hopes it isn’t. I love you. I have loved you. Thank you for everything– one day, I’ll thank you for breaking my heart, too. But today isn’t that day. Goodbye, Renjun. Until we meet again. I’ll see you in the clouds.” 

(When Renjun listens to it later, the automated voice tells him Yukhei left the voicemail at seven a.m. Beeping at him as it tells him ‘Xuxi ♡’ has left the message. Renjun throws his phone and watches it fall to the floor.)

  
  
  
  


Contrary to popular belief amongst their shared friends, it’s not the last time Renjun and Yukhei meet. They meet thrice more after Renjun rejects his proposal. Each in a different country, each a series of nights they agree to never talk about. 

  
  
  


The first is in Paris. An accidental meeting with overlapping schedules they only become aware of when they see one another at the airport. 

It’s only natural they’re drawn to each other once again after just over a month apart.

They explore Paris together between separate work meetings, in the pouring rain. They laugh as they run from shelter to shelter. 

They fall into bed together, in the apartment Renjun bought on a whim, that quickly becomes a place the two of them christen. Not in the name of love, but in the name of broken hearts and a relationship neither of them are strong enough to fix.

Two weeks after he leaves, as he returns to his flat after a long day- a postcard sits on his door mat. 

It reads; 

_Xuxi,_

_I hope you’re doing well. Thank you for Paris. Take care._

_Yours,_

_Renjun_

The picture of the two of them in front of the eiffel tower stares back at him. As does the return address to New York in Renjun’s rushed scrawl.

Yukhei sits on his kitchen floor for an hour, tear stained cheeks, until the notification sound of his phone snaps him out of his reverie. 

He stores the postcard in a drawer, and tries to not think about it again. 

  
  
  


The second time is in Beijing. 

This time it’s planned. They both know they’ll be in Beijing at the same time. They agree to have dinner.

They don’t agree to sleeping with each other or spending the next few days wrapped in one another beforehand. It happens anyway. 

Because that’s the thing. Renjun is magnetic and as much as Yukhei wants to forget, wants to let go, he is drawn back to Renjun with a single beat of his heart. 

Yukhei hopes. He hopes and dreams that this won’t end. That somehow they’ll go from two broken people back to a whole once again. That this time Renjun won’t say ‘be happy’ to only include Yukhei, this time he’ll say ‘let’s be happy’. For both of them to be happy, together. To hear those words come from Renjun’s lips once again would be heaven on Earth. 

“You know, you were never a bad person. Nor a bad choice, Xuxi.” 

“Just not the right one.” 

“If we’re meant to, we’ll meet again– in this life or another. In another life, I will be yours. Once and for all.” 

When they part ways it’s as if the humidity of August in Beijing wraps itself around them, the bustling city moving along by then as they stand face to face in a busy street. As quickly as they say their goodbyes and their eyes meet for the last time, Renjun is gone once again– another body in the crowd. Nameless and faceless once again. 

  
  
  


The third, and final time, is Milan.

It goes a little something like they’ll both have one night together. Enough time to grab dinner and fall into bed together once again. 

Yukhei knows he should say no, but he doesn’t. 

Dinner is their usual affair, chatter of work and mutual friends and whatever the fuck it is that they do with their days when they’re not overloaded with their respective jobs. 

Bed is better than usual. It’s passionate in all the right ways and they say all the goodbyes they never could before.

“I love you, Renjun.” 

They fall asleep side by side. 

Renjun is gone when Yukhei wakes up.

There’s no postcard in the coming weeks. 

  
  
  
  


That’s when Mark’s welcome home party happens. When they meet face to face and pretend like the last eight months didn’t happen, pretend like the only night was Milan, and they hurt. Torn apart at the seams like the night Renjun said no. When they uttered I love you’s to one another for the last time. 

Where Renjun tries to fix long lost broken pieces. 

Where they are two lost souls once again. 

  
  
It rains throughout Spring, more so than Yukhei is used to. He watches relationships form, others that fall apart, and others that, simply, run their course.  
  


He walks through the park alone in Spring. He laughs with friends in Summer. He throws himself into work in the Autumn. In Winter, he desperately tries to ignore the storm. Instead, he looks back. He looks back on days with Renjun, from picnics by the sea, to ones spent in each others arms without a care in the world aside from one another.

This time, the postcard is there when Yukhei goes to collect his morning post, coffee in hand. 

The writing is smaller this time, crammed into the back of the postcard. As if a postcard is just enough, a letter would be too much. Overstepping the boundaries of whatever it is they’ve been doing the last six months since they broke up. 

_It’s a funny thing, love. It’s ability to make you feel omnipotent whilst also being able to destroy you from the inside out in the same breath is, simply, terrifying to most, exciting to some. I think love is something I am not cut out for, at least not in the way others need me to be._

_I’m tired of explaining why I act in the ways that I do, or why my heart beats in such a way– or rather, why it doesn’t. I don’t want to open up the depth of my soul to another and then, eventually, move on and forget them forever. Must I? Must I long for the feeling of being two strangers in the world who’d forever keep each other’s deepest secrets?_

_I am not cut out for love. I cannot love you in the way that you have loved me._

_One day, I hope to be able to, to love someone the way you have loved me._

_But it was time we stopped pretending we were happy people, Xuxi. I hope you’re even close to happy. Let’s be happy. We’ll always have ‘us’, but for now let’s just have you and me._

_I hope you find the love you deserve, that one day you are completely and utterly happy. When you’ll never feel like you need me again and you can look back on us with fond memories instead of being the cause of your heartbreak._

_We were two lost souls when we met, only found for a time where we loved one another so fiercely, we forgot who we truly were._

_Loving someone will never be the same after having loved you, Xuxi. That much, I know._

_And I’m okay with that, for having had the honour of loving Wong Yukhei and to be loved by him in return, will always be a privilege only few are privy to and I’m thankful to have been one of them._

  
  
  


There will come a day where love is just another word, and not the name of the storm in his head and his heart. 

  
  
  


_Whilst you will always have Seoul (Paris, Beijing and Milan), I will always have you._

  
  


_Let’s be happy, Xuxi._

  
  


Because this is not Spring, love, or happily ever after. Yukhei knows.

  
  
  


_Until we meet in the clouds._

_– Just another lost soul._

  
  
  


This time, there’s no return address. 

  
  


Regret only reveals its perfect clarity too late.

A twisted game of ‘could have’, ‘would have’, ‘should have’.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you for reading loves. Leave a comment, kudos or cc if you feel like it and I’ll think about you for months on end. 
> 
> This has been Charlie, known to you previously as Alex, officially signing off until 2021. I hope to see you all again sooner rather than later. 
> 
> Stay safe, take care, be kind to yourselves. 
> 
> \- Charlie ♡


End file.
